The Daily bulletin. [volume] (Honolulu [Hawaii]) 1882-1895, 1887-06-22


ticulars of the Victoria's armament.
1t will consist Of two ll0-ton guns,
mounted in revolving turret aud
firing ahead or on either side; one
3O-ton gun, firing astern Or on
either side; twelve 5-ton guns;
twelve 6-pounder quick-fring guns
and 8 3-pounder quick-iring guns,
and considerable number of ma
chine guns for smaller ammunition.
Besides her artillery armament the
Victoria has powerful ram, and
she carries eight torpedo dischargers,
four above and four below water.
In the fighting days of the Victory
ramming was little practiced, and
torpedoes were wholly unknown.
But there is another point of view
in which the Victoria compares in
highly favorable degree with the
Victory, and that is in the slhallness
of the number of officers and men
required to handle the ship. The
comp enent Of officers and men on
board the Victory was $50, while on
board the Victoria it will only be
$50, of whom 10 Willie engineers
and stokers, leaving only 44O officers
and men in combatant capacity.
Thus, although the Victoria is three
times as big as the Victory and
prodigiously superior in offensive
power, there will only be half the
number of men exposed to death
and wounds in the working of her
armament. This result is chiefly
due to the mechanical appliances
which in recent years have been
introduced tor working the guns.
AT the commencement of my career
as an artillerist it was regarded as
an axiom that no gun exceeding 5
tons weight could be worked on q
moving platform, such as the deck
of a ship. A gun of 5 tons u cwt.,
firing charge of 20 pounds of
powder and shot of 6S pounds,
had been tried on shipboard and
found unmanageable, and it had to
be replaced by a gun of tons 10
cwt., firing only 1G pounds with the
same weight of shot. At the pre-
sent day we have to deal with guns
of 40 tons, which have to be
charged with powder and shot
weighing together 2,700 tons. 1t is
manifest that the loading and mani
pulation of such a gun could not
possibly be effected by the manual
labor of any number of men that
could be crowded around the gun,
but it has been effected by the en-
ployment of a very few men, acting
through the agency of hydraulic
machinery. Then, again, to go
from the largest to the smallest
artillery gun to be used in the Vic
toria, which is the three-pounder
Hotchkiss quick-firing gun, we have
another example of what mechanisms
have done for artillery. 1t is gun
of great range and penetrative
power, which, by means of mechani-
cal arrangemt nts, can be fired with
deliberate aim twenty times a min
ute by the employment of only three
men. Or, if we take the quick firing
gun which has been recently de-
signed and perfected at Elswick and
which fires any desired weight of
projectile between thirty and forty
pounds, and compare it with the old
32-pounders, such as the Victory
carried, and which required eight
men to work it at the rate of one
round minute, we have in the new
weapon gun of enormously greater
power, which can fire ten rounds a
minute with only four men to serve
it, so that this gun with four men to
serve it, will fire as many rounds per
minute as could formerly he tired by
eighty men with ten guns. l pro-
pose The toast of The Royal Navy,
and success to the Victoria -
London Standard.